Normal vs. Happy

For decades, doctors and parents seem to conflate these two when it comes to intersex children.

Recently, I finished reading Nobody Needs to Know, the intersex memoir from Pidgeon Pagonis. Now, Pidgeon worked long and hard, eventually getting Lurie Children’s Hospital to become the first hospital in the USA to stop intersex surgeries.

There was bit toward the end that really stuck with me, though. When talking to these doctors and representatives of the hospital, Pidgeon was met with this excuse that the doctors had received so much thanks and praise for helping these children lead “normal” lives.

I tell you what, that word is so loaded, “normal.” Because the opposite is abnormal, and it says that there’s something truly wrong with intersex children, that there’s something wrong with us.

The intersex flag is a purple circle on a field of yellow. Why? The circle represents perfection, the idea that we are perfect just the way we are when we’re born. While that’s not true 100% of the time (I could not urinate without a little incision when I was born), it’s true most of the time. And it’s why we intersex people fight so hard against unnecessary medical procedures.

What is normal?

I come back to the word “normal.” Starting with the terrible work of Dr. John Money, many doctors have this mindset that the only way that children can be happy and healthy is if we’re normal. But what is normal?

To them, for intersex babies, it’s clearly fitting into the heteronormative male and female definitions. Many doctors firmly believe that if a child doesn’t look like at typical male or female, they’re going to be unhappy and potentially unhealthy.

Furthermore, many parents believe the same thing. There are SO MANY parents who just want their kids to have a “normal” life because they want a “normal” life, not even realizing that that normal doesn’t always mean happy. And really, happiness should be the goal.

To make matters worse, there’s a track record of doctors using scare tactics to convince parents of the need for these unnecessary surgeries. For so many parents of children with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS), for example, parents are told that the testes will become cancerous at puberty.

This is not true.

Neither Normal nor Happy

Here’s the real kicker in all of this. With few exceptions, these unnecessary medical interventions lead not only to unhappy intersex people, but they still don’t fit into any definition of “normal.” These children grow up with scars, sometimes unable to have sex or orgasm, all because doctors made decisions about how to make them look “normal” while they were infants.

This is unacceptable, and yet it still happens in many hospitals around the world.

The best thing we can do? Educate parents? If more parents are made aware of their options if and when their child is born intersex, they won’t be as easily swayed by doctors. As I said last time, “if it can pee, let it be.” And that’s so important. Everything else is unnecessary. Those children can make their own medical decisions about their bodies once they’re old enough. They might not be “normal,” but they’ll be much happier if they have the chance to choose for themselves.

My Happiness

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I’m certainly happy. I have a lot to be thankful for and a lot of fulfillment in my life.

But my body and my surgeries don’t contribute to my happiness. I’m certainly not normal, having never been able to make babies and having a lot of limitations around sex. I’m also lucky in a lot of ways. The choices that doctors made when I was a toddler lined up with who I grew to be.

But what if they hadn’t? What if I’d grown up and been allowed to make my own choices about surgeries when I grew up? There’s no way to know for certain, but it’s a fascinating thought experiment. Maybe I would have found an even happier path through life.